This project is related to Objective 2 of the in-house project: To discover novel genes/alleles in soybean for seed composition, determine their inheritance, determine genomic location, transfer to adapted germplasm, and release.

Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) marker-assisted breeding for low phytate loci cqPha-001 and cqPha-002 and development of improved low phytate lines was conducted. We have used these markers to complete a BC7 cross to our cultivar 5601T and break the ~20cM genetic linkage on chromosome 19 between cqPha-002 and the Dt1 locus in the indeterminate state.

Seed inorganic phosphorous measurements in the line TN09-239 were evaluated over ten environments in the USDA Southern Uniform Preliminary Group V test. We found that the low phytate line TN09-239 which other breeders have been using as a crossing parent for low phytate transfer was significantly higher (by an order of magnitude) in inorganic phosphorus (P) than the normal cultivar 5601T in every environment. But when graphed over regions, the values for inorganic phosphorous concentration varied.

Amino acids were measured using near infrared (NIR) on whole ground seed from a population of approximately 282 recombinant inbred lines (RIL) of Essex × Williams 82 grown in replicated field trials in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Southern Illinois. The mean levels of the highly nutritionally important amino acids cysteine (Cys), lysine (Lys), methionine (Met), threonine (Thr), and tryptophan (Trp) were 0.66, 2.39, 0.66, 1.81, and 4.5, respectively, expressed as percent of seed dry weight. The RIL with the highest value for a particular amino acid showed a relative increase of 15.2, 6.7, 9.1, 6.6, and 13.3 percent change above the mean, suggesting that genetic improvements near those relative gains might be accomplishable utilizing elite soybean material.